24th Thing

It feels very strange coming to the end of the programme – I feel strangely bereft of Things to explore. If the programme is run again, I think it is essential to have someone on the team like me who actually goes through the programme – it has been not only a good experience for me, but also a very useful link into what other people are doing, or not. I shall continue to use this blog to go back and look at what I have done and make further attempts at some of the Things.

In terms of the Things themselves, I have enjoyed exploring all of them – some were new to me, although I knew about them without having used them.

Favourites: it has to be Facebook – I am now in touch with an old friend from 20 years ago and we are able to share photos of grandchildren and other old friends. I shall also use it to keep in touch with friends from work when I leave, so slightly work related!

Blogs – love them! Both for using and for searching – lots of useful narrowboating blogs out there with good tips on moorings, pubs etc. Work obviously – we use them for our Schools.

RSS – use for work, will set up stuff for home when I have time.

Podcasts – I definitely intend to use these when I retire, but probably won’t use them for work, other than encouraging their use for instructional purposes in Inductions etc.

Flickr – used it before, find it very useful for sharing photos, although I tend to do this via Facebook now. Also good for finding images and keeping track of what Dave Pattern has been doing…

Mashups – I want to explore this further. Enjoyed playing with it and think there’s a lot more to find out. Similarly delicious: work and play. Just need time.

Google Earth and Google Maps: excellent. Use them a lot – use Maps for directions now rather than multimap. Again I want to do a lot more with these – maybe plotting my travels round the globe (eat your heart out Michael Palin)

It’s interesting how those are the ones which instantly spring to mind, without checking back through the list of things. Pause to check…..

Tagging – very useful, but keep forgetting to do it. Technorati – not really bothered by it.

Wikis – yes, use them a lot already for work. Not sure if I’d use otherwise apart from looking things up on Wikipedia of course.

Twitter – not for me. soon got bored.

Image generators – great fun – will defintely go back to this one.

Google Docs – very useful for work if collaborating

LibraryThing – expected to like this, but didn’t, so unlikely to use again.

YouTube – forgot this one, surprisingly – use it a lot and will continue to do so.

Overall: I have really enjoyed being part of this. In terms of time taken, it has been more demanding than expected and I would have liked to give more time to each Thing. I think in any future run of the programme, we would need to emphasise that the one hour granted from worktime is nowhere near sufficient to do justice to each thing and participants must be prepared to give up their own time as well. Otherwise there is a real danger that it will be treated as a tick-box exercise rather than a real exploration of Web 2.0.

Finally, I have been dicussing this with another Thinger and we feel that it would be very nice to get all the successful Thingers together for a meeting and discussion – literally, not virtually! Reading the other blogs has been a really interesting part of the exercise and I think this should be given more emphasis in any future run – maybe even include as an ongoing Thing that you have to comment on other blogs each week. As a suggestion, I would love to have had some sort of look at/involvement in Second Life.

So long and thanks for all the fish…

22nd Thing – You Tube

I am almost certain that I completed this last week – I certainly found the clip I wanted to insert, but no sign of it even as a draft, so here we go again. I enjoy using You Tube to look and listen to bands I either know or want to investigate. It’s a good way of wasting time looking at the antics of Boston Terriers (Cammyz will understand) and Jack Russells, and we have even looked at narrowboats doing boating sort of things. The clip I have chosen is Joan Baez singing Day after tomorrow – we saw her sing it at Harrogate and it never fails to move me.

23rd Thing – Podcasts

My other half would need surgical removal from his Ipod Touch, so much so that it acts as a dummy to help him to sleep. My niece even bought him an ipod pillow for Christmas so he could plug the ipod into that and fall asleep listening to a podcast of his choice. Which says a lot for me….

So, on principal, up to now, I have ignored podcasts, but in the interest of completing my 25 Things, I have done a little investigative work. I found some language podcasts on the podcast directory but nothing in Mongolian so gave up on that. One on sleeping on long haul flights led me to the British Airways website, so that was the end of that one. So in the end it was the good old beeb and I found a recent podcast from Excess Baggage on Radio 4 about Pendle Hill, which we have climbed with proper maps and directions and nothing plugged into our ears to help us up or down. But this was interesting and I often listen to the programme itself anyway.

I think I shall definitely be using this in the future then we can both ignore each other.

LibraryThing

I have been looking forward to using this and quickly added several books that I have read both recently and also ones I remembered reading in the past few years. Then I wrote a couple of reviews and looked at a couple of others. Then I got bored. So I looked at it again last night and explored a few groups, but still didn’t find any real impetus to get involved. Strange. I really expected to like this but I honestly don’t think I can be bothered to keep up with it and use it regularly. I often check Amazon reviews for books I have read or for ideas for books and maybe I could look at this too, but I think it’s unlikely. Shame.

Google docs

I looked at this last year when Dave P was using it, but have never used it myself. It seems quite easy to use and I created a document and shared it successfully with two other 25 thingers. I also contributed to another document. I can see that this could be a pretty useful tool for collaboration.

19th thing – Online Image generators

South Park Librarian

Refurbishment worries

Had fun playing with these as it’s something I’ve never done before. Given a bit more time I would like to upload some photos and add captions – definitely something to look at in the future.

Twittering

I tried this quite some time ago and couldn’t really see the point of it, but in the interest of completing 25 Things, I have joined again. But every time I have looked for a friend it has told me that it is stressed out right now and to try later. So I will, maybe. Perhaps it has improved, but getting itself stressed does not endear it to me.

So I tried it again a couple of weeks later but still don’t like it, so doubt that I’ll bother again. This time it said it had a problem, but obviously wasn’t getting stressed about it.

For some reason I keep coming back to this and now on my rss feeds (good old Bloglines) I have found this about <a href="“>Twitter in libraries

17th Thing – Social networking

I’ve been meaning to join  Facebook for ages and then an old (very old) friend emailed me with an invitation so Icould see some of her photos (of grandchildren – sorry, it’s my new ‘big thing’) and so I joined in December and I am currently, as Tanya says, obsessed!  I think my 19 year old nephew is a bit worried that I am on as he won’t let his mum join, but then he didn’t have to invite me as a friend. Had a few problems with the iphoto installer on the Mac so got my handy home technician to work on it and now adding photos is very easy.

So, I’ve joined loads of groups, serious and otherwise, become fans of important things like the Clangers and Terry Pratchett, added loads of friends and rekindled an old friendship with someone from 20 years ago. Something else to keep me busy in retirement.

Week 7 – 16th Thing

Google Earth – with the kids scattered across the world, Google Earth has become something we use regularly to plot where they live and where they (and us) have been. We’ve been using it almost since it first started and have watched my son’s house being built and also seen the ger which we stayed in 18 months ago in Gachuurt, Mongolia, now replaced by Jennie’s new house but not updated on the map yet.

Just spent half an hour looking at places we’ve been to in the Greek Islands and wishing we were there now (only in summer).  I find Google Earth really compulsive and could spend hours looking at things on there. Ok, homework done, I can go back to spending my last few hours as a slob before work tomorrow.

Week 7 – 15th Thing

So much for playtime over Christmas – well I suppose it was playtime in that I never looked at 25 Things until now and here I am at 2.15 on Sunday afternoon doing my ‘homework’. Anyway looking at some of the other blogs, it seems that I’m not the only one to have put all thoughts of work out of my mind over the holiday.

So, Google Maps – great. The University still has the Great Hall which puts the photo back a few years and the car parks ( including Sainsbury’s) are pretty empty so I would guess the day to be Sunday. The map of our house looks as if Steve’s old company car is parked there so that puts it back at least 18 months. Off to Kentucky and my son’s house is still a building site so that dates it back about 3 years. I found a link to PJ Changs though where we had one of the best Chinese meals ever when we were over there a year ago. I like the Terrain views – could be useful for planning walks as my little legs get older!

 

Almost forgot the most useful bit – directions: Huddersfield – Madrid =1.269 miles (20 hours 30 mins) – just over 7 days if I walk it and take the Portsmouth-Bilbao ferry. 15.9 miles from our house to the University and apparently only 34 minutes – yeah right! 5 hours and 1 minute if I walk – I’ll bear that in mind next time  can’t get the car up the hill in the snow.